Speaker 1: Hello noble ones and welcome to Metatron's Academy, the channel where we explore how to learn languages in the most fun and effective way possible. So let's say that you are a language student and you have decided to pick up Italian. Which form of Italian should you choose? Should you go for standard Italian, so the language that normally is taught in classrooms that you find in dictionaries that is used officially for, like, dubbing movies in Italy? Or should you go for a regional variety, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Milanese, Venetian, Sardinian and so forth? The so-called dialetti or dialects. First things first, I'd like to clarify one thing. From a linguistic standpoint, purely technical, all of these different languages that are spoken in Italy at a regional level, technically are not exactly dialects. They are full-on languages. In the sense that whenever we think of Italian and its dialects, we think that Italian is the main mother language and all the other dialects, whether it be Sicilian, Sardinian and so forth, are all derivatives of Italian. But in reality, these languages have actually come directly from Latin. So rather than being Italian is the mum and all these dialects are the children, Italian and all the regional varieties are brothers and sisters. This however, is a very technical linguistic position. In the sense that if you do go to Italy, 99% of Italians will just refer to all of these regional varieties as i dialetti. And of course, whether a communicative system is considered to be a language or a dialect doesn't only have to do with linguistics, but also with social linguistics and if you really have to say it, politics. Now we might have a deep dive into the actual differences between dialects and languages on a separate video. I just wanted to put it out there to remove confusion. The purpose of this video is instead to give you an insider's perspective. How does it feel to use standard Italian or to use a dialect in Italy? The reason why I think I'm well equipped to speak about this is not only because I was born and bred in Italy and of course Italian is my first language, but also because I speak a regional variety. I do understand and speak Sicilian, but my dad is from the north. So I've also spent quite a bit of time in the northeast in Friuli where they speak Furlan and I spent four years in Naples for my academic studies. So I know what it means to navigate through different regional varieties and whether or not it's a good idea for a foreigner who is approaching one of the languages of Italy to specifically select, no, I want to learn Milanese variety, I want to learn Venetian. Right off the bat, I want to say that in the majority of cases, my strongest suggestion is go for standard Italian. There is a reason why Italian is the most commonly taught language out there when it comes to learning a language to communicate in Italy. That is because standard Italian is the most useful one in the sense that one of the problems with the many other regional languages you have in Italy is that they are not mutually intelligible with one another. Given not everyone in said regions uses or is even able to speak their regional language, but then again, the dialects are still very strong and very much spoken. What tends to happen a lot, though, is that as a Sicilian, if I go to Naples, people will usually speak to me with a mixture of standard Italian with a strong Naples accent and a few words that come from actual dialect. And the same can happen when I move to some areas in the north. Whenever I spent some time in Friuli, we communicated with standard Italian. We just had different accents. I occasionally used a few Sicilian words in there. They occasionally used a couple of words that were specific to their way of speaking. But in general, we didn't use full-on dialects. That is because the two or three times, just for fun, we tried and I went full-on Sicilian. Not just the accent, changing everything, grammar, words. And they used full-on, 100%, zero. We could not understand each other if not like the occasional word. So choosing standard Italian is usually the easiest way because it allows you to communicate with everyone. Of course, if you learn standard Italian and then you move to Milan and you pick up a Milan accent when you speak Italian, or if you learn standard Italian and you move to Rome and you pick up a Rome accent or a Sardinian accent, that's okay. That's not a problem to have a specific cadence or a specific way of pronouncing certain vowels and consonants. That's absolutely fine. In fact, it's endearing. It would be like speaking English with a Manchester accent, a London accent, or a specific, I don't know, Boston accent in America, as opposed to a California accent. The problem is that if you dive into the actual languages, so if you learn full-on Sicilian, if you learn full-on Sardinian even harder, the words will be different and you really have to consider them as if they were completely different languages. And also keep in mind that whenever it comes to anything educated, work-related, Italian dominates. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, back to sociolinguistics, but it is the case. You don't go to a job interview and start speaking full-on dialect and you will almost never hear a full-on university lecturer in a regional language. Professors will have their cadence and will have their accents, but they will choose, in the majority of cases, to use standard Italian. So is it completely worthless to learn regional varieties? And my answer is no. In fact, there are a few scenarios in which I think it would be nice for you to learn, at least to use these languages, up to a certain level. First and foremost, perhaps one of your family members speaks this variety. Maybe they are from Naples or maybe they are from Venice. In that case, usually people really like it for foreigners to learn a word or two. It's nice, it's endearing, it's charming, and most importantly, it's funny. The thing is that Italian regional languages have a somewhat intimate feel, in the sense that they do have a sort of feeling of belonging. So if you married someone from Sardinia, why not? Be my guest, learn some Sardinian, but my suggestion would be first learn Italian. So look at it as a third language option. First become conversational in Italian and then, if you wish, add a dialetto. Another situation in which I've seen foreigners actually learn a regional variety rather than standard Italian is when they move to a specific town. For example, I remember this Japanese lad moving to Naples and he was working in Naples as a plumber. Literally, I don't know the exact situation. Maybe he married a girl from Naples and then he was working as a plumber. And honestly, all the people around him spoke Neapolitan, so he literally learned Neapolitan before he learned Italian. With his kind of job, that worked. I mean, at the end of the day, he wasn't going to use Italian at a business level. And the people in the family that he married into were heavy users of Neapolitan, so be my guest. But of course, these are very small situations. So in the grand scheme of things, even though I do see articles sometimes that say, yeah, sure, absolutely, learn a regional variety, people will love it. Yet people will usually, although there might be situations in which they might think you're mocking them. It depends. You need to be able to read in between the lines. But yes, in general, people will love it when you learn a word from their dialect. But then if you try and use that same regional variety with someone from another region, it's not going to work. So really, what I want you to take from this is, if you're interested in learning Italian, learn standard, bring it up to fluency, maybe occasionally collect one, two or three expressions of words in the dialect of your interest, and only then start picking up a regional language. Now, of course, if you're only learning it for fun and you don't have any exact expectation when it comes to actual communication, feel free. I mean, you can absolutely pick up the most obscure dialect on the planet and it won't really matter. But my suggestion is in any other case, I would still strongly recommend go for standard and then move on to the regional languages as an expansion, as an extra. Also because another problem with regional languages is the fact that you will have a lot less resources because they are a lot less taught and it's a lot harder to find proper material to study these. Also because a lot of these are mostly spoken, they don't even have specific rules that have been codified. It's difficult to find a grammar book with great examples in Sicilian. You'll find books that teach Sicilian, but usually they're not as sophisticated as the ones that teach the actual language Italian. And of course, even when it comes to YouTube and any other resource, videos, films, everything will be in standard. You will have the occasional movie that was entirely shot in a regional language, but it's going to be a lot harder to find and you'll have a lot less to work with. So it is a harder task. But if there is a specific language or regional language that you like from the languages of Italy, which one is it? What are you interested in? Are you already fluent in Italian and are you considering learning one of the dialects? And if so, which one is it? Well, let me know in the comments below and would you be interested if I made a little mini course of Sicilian here on this channel? Thank you very much for watching and thank you for joining Metatron's Academy.